


Rearrange Me Til' I'm Sane

by MixterGlacia



Series: Wipe The Slate Clean [1]
Category: Venom (Comics), Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Body Horror, Fluff, Gift Giving, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Kissing, Other, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 09:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18736051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MixterGlacia/pseuds/MixterGlacia
Summary: In a world where you're born with a clue to lead you to the other half of your soul, Eddie has the misfortune to be given a mess of lines. How the hell is he supposed to interpret that?!





	1. Us

**Author's Note:**

> I'm shocked that it took me this long to publish one of my soulmate stories, bc it's certainly not the first one I wrote. Hope you guys enjoy!

Way back in the day, soul-marks used to mean something. That’s not to say they’re not important now, it’s just...less so.

 

When humans first realized what the strange markings meant, Earth was far less populated. As a result, it was a fairly simple task to figure out who they were referring to. Say you had an image of a hunting spear on you. The first reaction would be to speak to your clans' hunters, and if that failed, you’d venture to the neighbors, etc etc.

 

Not that there weren’t those unlucky few who had soulmates on then unreachable islands. Or those with particularly abstract marks.

 

Most commonly, they were images, or words that were closely tied to your future partner (or friend, depending on the person). Sometimes they would shift, for example if you took up a new hobby that became your passion, your soulmate’s mark would morph into something related to that. Some would even become a blend of both meanings, leading to strange results. For example, as a child, Anne’s mark was always a set of theater masks. Then around high school, it transformed. The masks had grown a ribbon that tied them to a  Rod of Asclepius.

 

Looking back, with what he knows now, it made perfect sense to Eddie.

 

Back to the topic at hand, the rarest marks were anything relating to your partner’s name. Even worse, their first or last words. Thankfully, the universe had some pity, leading to only a handful of such cases.

 

Though, they weren’t unheard of. As a matter of fact, Eddie used to know one such person.

 

Before he met Anne, Eddie used to be tasked to assist another program from time to time. The goal was to showcase the horrible trend of companies creating ‘mark matchers’. An insidious ploy to wring cash from desperate folks (usually older) that hadn’t yet found their other half.

 

Fucking capitalism.

 

This show had two regular hosts. The woman hadn’t met her soulmate yet. That was strange, considering she was one of the few with her ‘mates full name scrawled over the back of her hand. She took the ones with the lower accuracy ratings, since it should be a snap right? As was to be expected, they never worked. Half of the time they didn’t even spell the name right, or claimed she had an image instead.

 

On the flip side, you had the guy. He’d already met his partner ten years prior to the first episode. He took the ones that had an accuracy of eighty-five percent or so. These were the ones that boasted they could recognize if you’d already met them (and somehow not recognized it happening.). No surprise that they never got it right.

 

Now Eddie, he was called on for the ones that had a guarantee of ninety-five percent and up. That would be due to how vague his was. Some said the black lines coiled around his right forearm were ribbons of a cassette or VHS tape. Others said it was paint. Anne told him it looked like a gooey spiderweb. Eddie's the only one who can tell how often it changes.

 

Whatever it might be, it stumped every test thrown at it. One even had the audacity to say he’d already met them. That got a great laugh, since Eddie had never even proxed in his life.

 

After Anne, he’d grown tired of being the guinea pig for the show. He declined any future appearances after that.

 

Then he drove up to the Life Foundation for an interview. About five miles out, his arm began to scream in distress. Now he knows the real cause. He was feeling his first ‘prox pains’ in his time on this mud ball called Earth. At the time, though, he shrugged it off as being weather related.

 

Six months later finds him on the bridge, deep in thought as he plays with Anne’s ring. His bones are on fire. This was the part you never saw in all the rom-coms and harlequin books. How much it hurt to be in proximity to your soulmate. Eddie's skin itches like he’d been elbow deep in a fire ant nest.

 

This night was the worst it had ever been. Rumor claimed you could feel a shadow of the pain your ‘mate felt while proxing. Eddie doesn’t know if that’s true, but it sure fucking feels like it could be.

 

As he ventures into the depths of the hell-scape claiming to be a lab, the reporter’s mark aches more and more. At this point, he wouldn’t be shocked if he’d overlooked a serious injury. That’s all forgotten when the lift doors slide open. He captures everything he can, phone sweeping over the room. Then there’s a pang of pain so severe, it almost makes him drop the device. Almost in response, there’s a huge bang at the end of the hall.

 

“Maria?” Eddie breathes, eyes wide.

 

She pleads with him frantically. Her thin frame is so difficult to look at. There’s a fire hydrant. Ignoring the deep prox pains, Eddie hoists it over his shoulder. It takes a few tries before the glass shatters in a flash of red light. 

 

Then his friend launches at him.

 

Oh gods, he can’t breathe. There’s something about her hands, the grip cold to the point of feeling wet. For many long moments, Eddie struggles for air. Then Maria releases him. She lists to one side and collapses.

 

“Maria? Oh gods, Maria?” He whispers. Then sirens began to wail. As much as he wants to mourn, there’s no time. Something inside gives Eddie the strength to rise to his feet and  _ run _ . He escapes, much of which he can hardly even recall. (The tree though, that shit is gonna be jammed in his skull for a long time to come.)

 

Even as he gets home, Eddie doesn’t take stock of himself. Not until he wakes up in his own tub, eyes unfocused and head...surprisingly not hurting. The only thing is his stomach, which howls to be filled. That, and the voice in his head which echoes the pleas of his belly.

 

He doesn’t notice his prox pains had stopped until he’s experienced eating a live lobster, and being nailed by an SUV in the span of one night.

 

It’s when he’s laying at the base of a buoy in the bay, watching a beast of living ink hover in his face that he realizes it. Glancing at his arm, he confirms it wasn’t Maria. For one, he’d have proxed years ago, as he’d known her long before the pain started up. For two, it hasn’t become a ghost mark, as they do when your partner dies.

 

No, the black bands are still dark as ever. Maybe there had been someone else in the lab? At this point, Eddie has a hell of a lot more to worry about.

 

On the other hand, the creature is curious. In the rare moments of calm following the chase, they won’t stop asking about it. 

 

**What is this?** They ask, poking at one of Eddie’s tattoos', the stark one on his right bicep. 

 

“A tattoo.” He snaps back, trying to ignore the way others look a him.

 

**And this?** They trail across the bird on his chest.  **This is also one?**

 

Eddie nods, shoveling tater tots into his mouth. For some reason he’d been craving them like mad. “I’ve got a lot of them, so quit asking.”

 

Then Venom touches his soul-mark.  **This one is different, though. It’s not made of ink.**

 

A shiver sails down his spine. “It’s a human thing. You wouldn’t understand.”

 

The alien snarls at that. They coil around his heart, hissing,  **You could tell us and see if you’re right about that.**

 

“Drop it, buddy. It doesn’t concern you.”

 

Venom grabs one of Eddie’s ribs and yanks on it, knocking the wind from his lungs.  **Everything about you concerns us, Eddie. Don’t make us root through your memories.**

 

“Enough!” Eddie snaps when he manages to get a breath again. “No more talking!”

 

The symbiote growls so low it feels like a hornets nest.  **Fine. Be a bitch. We will find out on our own.** Then they retreat somewhere that Eddie can’t feel.

 

They’d have more issues soon enough.

 

* * *

 

 

Eddie’s almost thankful to be knocked out at the hospital. It distracts him from how horribly his arm hurts after Venom is yanked from his cells. It continues to twinge after he wakes up to an ugly as fuck symbiote screaming in his face. The thing gives him a dismissive snort when he refuses to snitch on his alien.

 

...His? When did he decide that?

 

That’s when Riot looks at Eddie’s arm. They give a strange sort of laugh at that and say,  _ “You can pretend all you want, human. Venom will come for you. It’s only a matter of time.” _

 

Then Drake takes over again, calling in his underling.

 

Eddie scowls as he’s herded into the woods, the butt of the rifle cold against the back of his skull. Then again, without Venom, everything feels like ice. Falling to his knees, the reporter wonders if this is really how it ends. How quickly will his soulmate’s mark bleach out? Would they feel him die?

 

That’s when it happens again. The prox pains. Like a fire lit in the very marrow of his bones. It takes a good bit of concentration to avoid flinching. Raising his head, Eddie notices movement. His eyes widen as he watches the merc's vanish one by one. 

 

With a wry smile, he lifts his eyes to the man in front of him. “Karma’s a bitch.” He says with a laugh in his voice.

 

Then Venom swallows the guy’s head like it’s a midnight snack. They stride over to Eddie, pulling him to his feet. One massive hand closes over his mark, and the pain stops.  **“Hi Eddie.”** They purr, then silence any response he could have come up with in one swipe of their tongue.

 

As his symbiote floods back into Eddie’s body, his right arm shakes with something the man can’t even begin to explain. He hardly notices Anne until she asks about the corpse at their feet. 

 

Venom leaves little room for argument as they race off, ignoring how Eddie chastises them. Then comes the question they’ve been waiting for.

 

“What made you decide to stay?”

 

As Venom encases their host, they gently squeeze Eddie’s right arm, the action making the man’s heart skip a beat. The two beings breathe together for a few long moments before the alien responds,  **“You did, Eddie.”**

 

With that, they race towards the launch platform.

 

As Riot tears at their shared body, Venom takes comfort in the fact that if they die, they could at least ensure Eddie lived. After all, they would never be able to regain the feeling of finding their Other again. Ensuring that the man in question can’t hear that, Venom fights tooth and nail, bending in ways they’d never done before. Riot had to die. If they escaped, Eddie would be taken by another or eaten before the night was over.

 

Venom will do anything in their power to stop that.

 

The shriek of the speakers strips them from their host and the pain screams even louder. Venom is flung below the platform, into the water beneath. They will drown, be it in the air, or the tide. Eddie is their lungs, as they are his symbiote.

 

...Theirs? In truth, they had never had something belong only to them before. That alone drives them to claw their way from the murky depths.

 

Fate has a way of screwing everything over, it would seem. For Venom, it manifests in the form of a scythe, driven deeply into all too vulnerable flesh. No. NO.  _ NO. _

 

Even as the aliens’ strength wanes, they crawl up to Eddie. His blood puddles around them, making Venom slip. They cry in their native tongue, pleading with the human to stay awake. Then they finally hook into his arm, past the bands of whatever that thing on Eddie’s arm really was, into his heart.

 

It takes a lot out of Venom to revive their Other. Thankfully, humans seemed to be harder to kill than they expected. The wound stitches shut, veins welding back together. When Eddie’s blood isn’t enough, Venom flows into the man’s vascular system. By this point, they knew the reporter inside and out.

 

Thank fuck for that.

 

The two don’t need words when they hear the rocket scream to life. A duet of minds become one as they race for the fuel tanks. Wicked claws hook into steel, ripping through like it was wet paper. Then?

 

Then Venom lets go. 

 

Eddie gasps, feeling his symbiote peel away from him. When his eyes open, he can see a canopy of black. Then the explosion rocks him to his very core, the last place he can feel Venom’s presence. His mark is throbbing with twin heartbeats.

 

He knows what the alien is about to do before they can even voice it. No. NO.  _ NO. _

 

**“Goodbye.”**

 

Eddie can see the glow of the fire as Venom boils away, and their pain is echoed through him as well. Tears fall upwards and evaporate alongside his symbiote. He cries out into the night. In the time it takes Eddie to hit the bay, that’s when it finally clicks.

 

From the light of the blaze he can see it. Eddie’s soul-mark begins to fade.

 

Oh gods no.


	2. Them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath.

Eddie screams until his lungs give out. He struggles against the diver that pulls him from the water. It’s so cold. His bones feel like they’re splintering into shards of ice that stab at his flesh. At some point, he thinks he can hear Dan’s voice. It doesn’t matter.

 

Nothing matters. The universe had struck the final blow against him. No job, barely a home, and now?

 

Now his fucking soulmate was gone. If only Eddie had wised up sooner.

 

Eddie’s voice dies before he even gets into the ambulance. Anne’s there. She takes his hand, whispering gentle words. That’s when she sees his mark. Pale as corn-silk, she’d later say. For now though, she just holds the man close, only backing off when the machine he’s hooked to begins to wail. 

 

Eddie blacks out before they reach the hospital.

 

* * *

 

 

He wakes up in a freezing room. 

 

“Eddie?” Asks a familiar voice. “Eddie, can you hear me?”

 

When the man tries to speak, it sends a slicing pain down his throat. 

 

“Don’t talk.” The voice says, warm hands on his shoulders help him to sit up. “Just nod or shake your head, okay?”

 

Eddie nods weakly. His eyes are dull, staring off into space. It doesn’t matter anymore. He’d lived this long without Venom. Regardless of how horribly it hurts, he was going to keep on surviving. 

 

They would have wanted that.

 

Eddie zones out during the rest of the examination. In truth, he spends a week in a haze. Then the job offers flood in. He starts at a a small paper, churning out mountains of words. Maybe if he just keeps writing, it’ll fill the void his symbiote had left behind.

 

It’s two weeks in when he sees it. His mark isn’t so pale anymore. It’s the colour of far off storm clouds. Call him crazy, but Eddie knows it wasn’t like that before. That simple observation strikes a spark of hope in him.

 

Said spark grows into a flame, thawing the frost that had formed over the time since he’d lost Venom. That’s when he starts wearing those ratty old hoodies of his again. The ones he never let Anne throw out.

 

If Eddie noticed, surely Anne would. So he hides his mark from the world. Every morning, the reporter examines it. Sure enough, it darkens with each day. Encouraged by this, Eddie remembers the things that Ven’ would ask for. (Human brains sansed)

 

He asks Mrs. Chen for chocolate every morning. 

 

It takes another month for the mark to return to how it was before the rocket. How it was when he could still hear that deep, raspy echo of his own voice. How it was when Venom would whisper questions in the safety of their shared mind.

 

Then the man hears it.

 

**Eddie?**

 

Tears roll from his cheeks. The man closes his laptop, arms crossing over his own chest. He holds himself close, hoping the alien understands the gesture.

 

**Eddie, you’re crying…** They whine, bleeding from his arms to form their own torso. That’s when they take their hosts chin in one massive palm, cradling him.

 

That only wrenches another sob from him. “I-I thought I lost you, you fucking asshole!”

 

Venom flinches, claws brushing their Other’s hair away from his eyes.  **“Eddie-”**

 

“No, you shut up and listen to me.” The man demands. “I’ve been thinking of what I would say to you for almost two months, okay?”

 

His symbiote stills, sitting back to judge their hosts expression. They nod, which is all Eddie needs to encourage him to speak his mind.

 

“You asked me what this was.” He starts, rolling back his sleeve to display his mark. “Right?”

 

**“Yes.”**

 

Eddie takes a trembling breath. “This is a soul-mark. It’s meant to guide me to the other half of my soul.”

 

There’s a moment of total silence.

 

“I get it now. Why I always got prox pains around the Life Foundation six months ago.” Eddie starts. He reaches up and takes one of Venom’s hands into his own. Then he places his right arm into their palm. “When I was young, it would change every so often. This is in your language. Isn’t it?”

 

**“...Yes.”**

 

“What does it say?” Eddie asks.

 

**“Our name. The one we made when we met you.”** Venom confirms.

 

Eddie’s mark begins to shift then. It goes from strands of night, to bands of shimmering oil. “You’re my soulmate.”

 

**“In our culture, you’re our Other.”** His symbiote confirms.  **“We don’t have marks, but we know all the same. We’re born with a drive to find our Other. The one that will complete us.”**

 

The man lets out a broken laugh. “So you weren’t joking when you said I was yours?”

 

Venom hisses a bit at that.  **“Of course not, asshole. We’re yours and you’re ours.”**

 

It’s then that Eddie pulls his Other close. “Anne probably mentioned I was a dense motherfucker, right?”

 

**“Yeah. We see what she meant now.”** They rest their chin on Eddie’s head.  **“You didn’t even get it once we kissed you.”**

 

“Wait-” Eddie balks. “That was your idea?!”

 

His soulmate only laughs in response. Then they lean down.  **“You think you’ll get it the second time?”**

 

To spite Ven’, Eddie’s the one that takes the first step, pressing his lips against his symbiote's teeth.

 

They just purr, deepening it without a second thought. In their head, they say so many things to their host. Promises of safety, a guarantee that they wouldn’t try to lead others to Earth, and at the end they whisper how much Eddie means to them.

 

**You are our Other, Eddie. Our soulmate. Whatever you call it, you’re** **_ours._ ** **We let you go once, and it felt like part of us died. We couldn’t stop Riot from hurting you, so we killed them. We made them** **_suffer_ ** **because they knew you were ours. They saw our chosen name on your arm. They wanted us to be angry so they had an excuse to devour us. Our only regret is that we couldn’t make their death worse. We will never let you go again, Eddie.**

 

That’s when Eddie breaks the kiss, gasping for air. “Holy shit, babe, I get it.”

 

**“Babe?”** Venom wonders, dragging their tongue up their Other’s cheek.

 

“A term of endearment.” Eddie says, still out of breath. “Figured you’d like it more than parasite.”

 

**“Not a parasite, Eddie! Parasites only take from their hosts!”** Venom snarls, eyes narrowed.  **“We’re in a symbiotic relationship. You give to us, and we give back to you. Understand?”**

 

That makes the human chuckle. He reaches up, hand cradling his soulmate’s chin. “I know, hon’. I’m just teasing you. You’re a symbiote, I got it.”

 

**“...We’ll let it slide for now. You should make it up to us, Eddie.”**  Ven’ purrs, pressing their forehead to their human's face.

 

“I actually had ordered something special. I figured you were gonna be strong enough by the time it got here. It'll be here tonight, okay?”

 

A few hours later, the buzzer goes off. Venom retreats into their host so Eddie can go to the desk and pick up the mystery box. The door to their flat shuts and it takes all of a second for Venom to form their face, sniffing at the package.

 

**“Smells good, Eddie!”** They observe. 

 

“Awesome, because it’s all yours. Open it up already.” Eddie prompts, taking a seat on his awful couch.

 

The symbiotes’ claws make quick work of the wrapping, allowing the smell of fresh chocolate to fill the apartment.  **“All ours?”**

 

“Yup. A friend of mine works at Ghirardelli's. She gave me a great deal on a custom order. There’s five pounds of it there. I made sure half of it was dark chocolate, just to see what you prefer.” The man says. “Dig in, babe.”

 

Venom does just that. It shouldn’t surprise Eddie how quickly they finish it, but damn, it’s crazy to watch them go to town on the bar. When they swallow the last mouthful, they turn to him.

 

**“Hey, Eddie?”**

 

“Hm? What’s up?” He responds.

 

**“We love you.”**

 

Eddie’s heart skips in his chest. A grin, warm with affection, splits his face. “Love you too, Ven’.”

 

A few weeks later, Eddie is having lunch with Anne and Dan. His ex notices his arm. “Eddie, you didn’t tell me you met your soulmate!”

 

There’s a dark chuckle only he can hear. “Oh, yeah. With all the craziness I forgot to mention it.”

 

Dan chimes in. “When do we get to meet them?”

 

Eddie pauses for a moment. He nods to himself, then says, “You already have.”


End file.
